Posts by Babou

15% or 115% carbon

"J0815+4729 is smaller and has only a millionth part of the calcium and iron that the Sun contains, but it has a relatively large amount of carbon, almost 15 per cent of what is contained in the Sun."

Since you later state "The star [... is ...] amongst the ones with the largest over abundances of carbon,” I suspect that what you intended to say is that it contain 15% more carbon than what is contained in the sun. I also assume that it is all measured in proportion to the mass of the concerned star.

Why a unified patent court system ... but no unified fiscal and social system for Europe? Maybe because it does not benefit the same people. The rest is deeply irrelevant.

More accuracy and more information

Some of the information in the article is not quite correct (authors do not lose moral rights, they also keep their property rights, but can no longer manage them themselves where digital publishing is concerned), though the law may be seen as worse, as it is very destructive of copyright itself. One aspect of it is that publishers who stopped publishing the book keep a right to up to 50% of the royalties intended for the author when the book is published digitally under this system.

Authors can get out, but the conditions for getting out are such that it may be very difficult. It is all too complex to explain in a few words. Not to mention the complex set-up to actually implement the law, which is probably more than borderline regarding financing and control structure of the industrial set-up.

The information was sent in November on various lists, including A2K.

Three free software associations undertook to defend copyright and even published a press release in English:

2011-11-14 • The French Senate proposes to legalize piracy of the French 20th century printed heritage http://aful.org/sections/communiques/french-senate-proposes-to-legalize-piracy-french-20th

Since then, what little improvement was brought to the law (such as free access to the database listing concerned books, for example), is essentially due to the action of these three free software associations, sending amendments and documentation to members of parliament. This is one irony.

The other irony is that both the Chamber and the Senate voted unanimously, many in good faith believing they were protecting copyright against Google, and not realizing they were doing much worse. They have been brainwashed for 3 or 4 years against Google by publishers, not to mention the incompetent management of the French National Library and the ministry of Culture.

As it was in the case of the Google settlement agreement, this was an initiative of a publisher organization and an author's organization.

Just keep protesting. It may help up repeal this nonsense with the next presidency. This is why we wrote the first press release, but got no attention.

There is also a good chance that le law will be repealed by the Conseil Constitutionnel (read Supreme Court) when it is brought to it. It may be also judged not conforming with the European legislation by European bodies. Just keep protesting.